


From First To Last (and then some more)

by Leviarty



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alex loves physical mutations, Alex-centric, Bozo is a term of endearment, Enthusiastic Consent, M/M, No Smut, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, X-Men: Apocalypse Spoilers, shitty foster families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 08:30:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7094353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leviarty/pseuds/Leviarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, A History of Alex</p><p>There was a time when he categorized his life as before the crash, and after the crash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From First To Last (and then some more)

_one_

Katherine was fifteen and stupid, and Chris was older and attractive and for some reason totally into her. He was sweet and gentle, but long gone by the time she realized she was pregnant.

An unwed mother, as young as she was, would bring shame to her family, and she knew all too well what they did to girls like her. So she ran. She ran, and found herself amongst a group of women who didn’t shame her horribly for what she’d done, but rather elected to help her. They kept her housed and well fed. Many months later, she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy in the convent, surrounded by those women who’d helped her.

She smiled down at the sleeping boy, and snuggled him.

“You can’t keep him,” Sister Christine said, voicing what she already knew. They’d already found a family to take the child, and married couple who’d been trying to have a child of their own for several years, but had been unsuccessful.

“I know,” Katherine said. She would nurse him for a few days, and then he would be sent away “I know.” She didn’t think there was any way she could take care of him anyway, no matter how much she might have wanted to in that moment. She couldn’t even take care of herself properly. “What if… what if I want to see him again. Later, I mean, when he’s older.”

Sister Christine shook her head. “I’m afraid that decision cannot be made by you. The adoptive family may choose to tell him about you, and if they choose to seek you out, they will know to begin their search here, but you must accept that they might not.”

Katherine closed her eyes and nodded. “But if he does come looking, you’ll tell him where to find me?”

 

 

_two_

When Alex was nine years old, his parents died in a plane crash. He didn’t remember the plane, or the parachute, or the jump, only waking up, lost and confused, in a hospital, where they tell him his parents are dead, and a foster family is waiting to bring him home.

“You’re too quiet,” the mother would say. “Speak up.” He couldn’t think of her as _his_ mother, no matter what she said, and didn’t know what it was she wanted him to say.

“Todd was always eating,” the father would say, when Alex pushed food around his plate without making much effort to eat it. “You should be more like him.”

He spent countless months pretending to be a child he wasn’t, the child they lost.

 

The fire came suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, and it mesmerized him as it spread from the floor to the bed to the drapes, and all around the room.

And then the father was dragging him out of the house, coughing and sputtering. The mother slapped him, _hard_ , across the face, and screamed and screamed and screamed, and he didn’t understand why she was so angry, or why the man from child services later packed him into the car and drove him away to another family.

 

“You can’t set things on fire, boy,” the man said the second time he was taken away.

“I didn’t,” Alex said adamantly. “ _I didn’t_.”

“And don’t lie, either.”

 

It wasn’t until he was a little older that he realized that, oh, maybe he _had_ started the fires. Rings of molten heat poured from his body, and he couldn’t control it, couldn’t hold any of it back. His panic and fear made it worse, and anger brought it on no matter how hard he tried to keep it inside.

He tried to control it, tried so hard to keep it contained, but how could he hope to control something he couldn’t even begin to understand?

 

“I need to know about my parents,” thirteen year old Alex told another man from child services. “I need to know everything you know about them.”

The man, who was nicer than the other but only because he didn’t care enough to be mean, shrugged and tossed him a thin file containing everything they knew about his parents.

Which was damned close to nothing.

But it was there that he learned they weren’t his parents at all.

 

He ran away for a while, went back to his childhood home, and talked to anyone and everyone he could find in connection with his parents. No one seemed to know the circumstances of his adoption, and many hadn’t even known he was, but one old man directed him to a church, who directed him to a convent.

 

Sister Christine was a very old nun, graying around the edges, and smiled sadly when he told her his name.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I do remember you, of course, and I remember your mother. She always hoped you’d want to meet her, but it’s been many years since we’ve heard from her. I’ll give you what we have, but don’t get your hopes too high.”

 

The last known address of one Katherine Summers was the dead end. She’d moved on years before, and left nothing behind, not even an indication of where she might be going.

And that was the end of that. His search had brought him so close, and still left him with no answers.

 

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” the man from child services said when he eventually turned up again. The man filled out the paperwork, and sent him off to another home.

 

The fires kept happening, and the harder he tried to stop them, the more out of control they became. He spent the next 4 years in and out of foster homes and juvenile detention facilities, until…

He lost control in the wrong place. The wrong place at the wrong time and someone died.

 With his record, they try him as an adult.

 

 

_three_

“What a pretty little slut you are.”

“Can’t wait to get my hands on that tight twinkie ass.”

It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, from one shitty foster home or another. He tried to ignore their comments and the catcalls, but it’s about as easy as controlling whatever force had taken up residence in his body. The catcalls didn’t stop, and he could feel his hands heating up, his whole body gearing up for a blast.

By some miracle, he manages to contain it.

 

“Yo, what you in for?” the big black guy in the cell across from him asked. Alex had no idea what his name was, but he had the word Tiny tattooed across his forehead.

“Arson,” Alex said. “A foster mom died.”

“Foster mom? How old _are_ you, kid?”

“Seventeen.”

“ _Shit._.”

 

“Mmm, where’ve you been all my life, pretty boy?”

The next time Tiny heard someone making lewd comments at Alex’s expense, he broke a guy’s nose.

“Kid’s like sixteen, and you’re like forty. You’re disgustin’. Next time I hear a word outa your mouth, you start losing teeth. That goes for all ya’ll,” he shouted at the crowd. “Lay a hand on the kid, you deal with me.”

He really wasn’t sure how he ended up on the good side of the biggest, badest badass here, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing.

 

Most of the guy’s backed off, and when Tiny was around, no one said a damned word to Alex. It was when Tiny was talking with his family, or on the rec courts, or in solitary confinement, _that_ was when the real creeps came out. The guys who didn’t care that Alex was just a kid, or thought that made it that much sweeter.

 

He managed to keep a lid on his powers longer than he thought possible, but it wouldn’t last forever, he knew. He could feel the heat under his skin, and no matter how long he stood under a cold shower, he could still feel it burning.

“Communal showers are a bitch, huh,” one of the creepy guys said, coming right up behind him. “And you’re about to be mine.”

Alex wasn’t tall or strong, and the guy overpowered him easily, and he fucking _hates_ himself for making himself an easy target, for letting it happen. The guy is on top of him, forcing himself in despite Alex’s struggles and cries.

All the burning rage beneath his skin is let loose, but it’s too late anyway.

 

Someone would find him, shaking under the still pouring showerhead, the creep unconscious against the other wall, his face and torso burned.

And somehow it was Alex who wound up in solitary confinement, even though it was that creep who attacked him, who…

He tried not to think about it, just like he tried not to think about the fire in his arms, and the aches all over his body, the bruises left by unwanted hands, and all the scars that weren’t so visible.

 

It happened again, same place, different guy. Alex was an easy target, too small to put up much fight, and this time when he tried to summon the fire, it wouldn’t come, and he was forced to just stand there are take it, like some kind of fucking…

Whore.

 

The third time never had a chance. Alex let the heat pour off him in waves, and later let the guards drag him off to solitary.

This was infinitely better.

 

A couple years later, and he was still getting his ass escorted down to solitary every few days. “I don’t get it,” one of the new guards asked. “You seem like a good kid, never talk back, never have problems with the guards, you mind your own. But you pick fights with random guys. It’s almost like you wanna be locked down here.”

Alex shrugged his shoulders. He was bigger now, stronger, and could hold his own in a fight when he had to. “Better for everyone this way.” Down here, no one could touch him, and he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

 

 

_Four_

Alex spent most of his life thinking he was a freak, and the probably the only one.

Except, here he was, surrounded by people who were, for all intents, just like him. Their abilities were different, and kind of weird, but their weirdness was shared.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he was around people he liked, people he was comfortable around, and more importantly, didn’t have to hide from.

It would take some getting used to.

 

He was nineteen now, and his shoulders were broader, and the guys in prison had stopped calling him a twink, even if only because they had learned to fear him, but he recognized the looks Armando was shooting his way. It was the same look the guys in prison had given him when they wanted something, wanted _him_ , in a twisted way. He wondered if it was that obvious, if there was a flashing neon sign above his head that read ‘has been fucked by guys’.

Darwin was attractive, no denying itbut he had a solid ten years on Alex, and Alex wasn’t interested. He let Armando sit close, let his arm rest on his shoulder, hardly flinched at all when he grabbed at his waist. He’d gotten pretty good at that: letting people touch without burning them to a crisp. Pretending it was okay.

But he wasn’t okay with it. His body screamed at him to put a stop to it, to push back. _Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile._ Except Alex knew it would never make it that far, not with the plasma that could destroy everything.

Everything except maybe Darwin.

 

He liked Darwin, he thought. He didn’t like that he put his hands on him like they were familiar, like they belonged there. But he did like the guy. Certainly didn’t want him dead.

“Are you insane?” Alex asked in a hushed voice, flinching away from the hand on his hip. Darwin told him the plan, go grab Angel and have Alex attack the others.

“Just do it,” Darwin said, and turned to follow Shaw and his friends.

He knew it was a bad idea, that someone could get hurt, but he shooed the others away, and when Darwin called out his name, he let the plasma coil around him.

No matter how uncomfortable Darwin made him, he didn’t want him dead. Guys in the prison, sure. Not him. And once he was gone, once his mind had the time to wander and over-analyze, he wondered…

 

It was his fault, he knew. It was his fire that burned Darwin up from the inside.

“It’s not your fault,” Charles said. “You couldn’t possibly have know that his mutation would enable him to do that.”

Still, it felt like his fault.

 

 

_Five_

Hank though… Hank was tall and beautiful and Alex wanted to climb him like a tree.

“You’re unusually warm,” Hank had said, when they first met. They were taking all sorts of vitals and information and samples.

“Think I’m hot, do you?” Alex asked, a wry smile playing across his lips.

“No, I mean-” Hank blushed deeply and stuttered, causing Alex’s smile to grow. “Your body temperature… it’s several degrees above normal. Are you feeling ill?”

Alex shook his head. “Been that was as long as I remember.”

“Fascinating.” He watched as Hank tapped his pen in thought, adjusted his glasses, and started jotting down hurried notes.

 

“How about Big Foot?” he asked, and immediately regretted it. Hank’s face fell, like the light behind it had been snuffed out.

Raven rushed to his defense, spewing a lame insult to the size of his penis (which was perfectly sizeable, thank you very much), and the others laughed at his expense. Whatever. He could handle a little teasing. He doubted any of them could say anything he hadn’t heard before and ten times worse.

 

Alex watched them run for a while, watched Charles outsprint him time and again, and wondered, vaguely, what it was he was trying to accomplish her. He’d been trying to get Erik so move larger and larger metal object, and teaching Sean how to focus his powers on breaking a single glass in a row of twenty (there was also talk of flight), and controlling Alex’s plasma so it wasn’t so massively chaotic and destructive. But what was he trying to teach Hank?

It was obvious, once his shoes were removed and he easily outran Charles like he’d been doing it all his life.

“All you need is a big red nose and we could call you Bozo,” he said, because he was spectacularly good at saying all the wrong things.

Hank’s face fell. “I’m done here,” he said, walking away.

“Hank,” Charles called after him, only to be ignored. _You’re an idiot_ , Charles said in Alex’s head.

 _I know_ , Alex thought back at him.

 

“Am I still a bozo?” Hank asked, and even if he hadn’t just found this monumental control over his ability, Alex still would’ve been high off Hank’s smile.

“Yes, Hank, you’re still a bozo.” Hank’s smile faltered, but didn’t disappear completely. “But good job.”

 

“You’re such a dork,” he said, walking into Hank’s lab. Those were distinctly _not_ the words he’d come here to say, but nonetheless, there they were.

“Go away, Alex,” Hank said, sounding more annoyed than he usually did.

“Just wanted to hang out is all,” Alex said, throwing up his hands defensively.

“We both know the real reason you’re here. I’m not in the mood for another ten rounds of make-fun-of-the-fag. Freak. I mean freak.” He ran his hands through his hair nervously. “Everyone already knows that you hate me, you don’t need to reinforce that notion.”

Alex frowned, realizing that Hank had likely spent the better part of his life being the butt of the joke, and not just because of his mutation.

“I don’t hate you, Hank,” he said, taking a few steps closer. Hank took a step back in fear, bumping into the counter behind him. Alex shook his head and held out his hands, palms up. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “And I don’t hate you. God, I think you’re _beautiful_.”

Hank’s mouth fell open in shock. “Wh-what?”

“All of you. Your dopey hair, you mind, your dumb glasses. Even your goofy feet. You think you’re a freak? I’ve got news for you: we’re all freaks.”

“What are you doing?” Hank asked when Alex reached up to remove Hank’s glasses.

“I’d like to kiss you. Is that okay?”

Hank’s eyes widened, clearly surprised, once again, by his words. “Yes?” he said.

“Hank, I’m serious,” he said. Damn, he wanted him so badly, but not if Hank didn’t feel the same. “Tell me I’m out of bounds and I’ll back off,” he said, starting to take a step back.

“No, it’s-” Hank leaned in and…

To say he hadn’t thought about this a lot would be an outright lie, but no amount of fantasizing could do justice to the real thing. Even if Hank’s hands were clumsy and the height difference made for an awkward angle, Alex couldn’t get enough.

“What’s this?” Alex asked when his hand stumbled over a syringe on the table.

“The serum I’ve been working on. I think I’ve perfected it. All that’s left now is to test it on, well, me. Raven… I don’t think she’s interested anymore.”

 

“I won’t stop you,” Alex told him later. “From taking the serum, I mean. I don’t think you should though.”

“Why not?”

“It won’t change anything. You’ll still be a freak, just like the rest of us.”

Hank shook his head. “But I’m not just like you. You all can hide in plain sight. With this, hopefully I can too.”

 

He had hoped, kind of, that Hank wouldn’t go through with the serum, that he would realize it didn’t matter. He understood though, sort of, why he felt like he had to.

“I think I’ve got a new name for you,” Alex said. “Beast.” The moment the word escapes his lips, he knew it was probably the wrong one, because he always, _always_ said the wrong things where Hank was concerned. But Hank’s reaction was something akin to a smile, rough and growling. Alex couldn’t help but smile back.

“I still think you’re beautiful,” Alex whispered as they loaded onto the jet. It sounded insane, but it was the damned truth.

 

 

_Six_

There was a time when he categorized his life as _before_ the crash, and _after_ the crash _._ Then it _before_ prison, and _in_ prison.

Now everything was classified as either _before_ Cuba, or _after_.

 

Turning a mansion into a school was no easy task, one made all the more difficult by the fact that they were only four strong after Cuba. It was lonely, at times, and though he and Sean could joke and laugh until they couldn’t breathe, it didn’t change the fact that Charles was in a wheelchair, or that Raven and Erik and Angel had left them, or that Hank was closing himself off more and more every day.

 

“You missed dinner,” Alex said, leaning in the doorway of the lab. It was still a mess from both before and after Cuba – for every handful of things they’d cleaned up, Hank broke at least one more – but it was slowly coming together, and the remodeling plans were… somewhere buried under broken glass. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Hank said dismissively.

“Doesn’t sound fine,” Alex said, approaching him. “And looks like you’ve broken some more equipment.” He bent down to pick something up off the floor.

“Don’t-” Hank said sharply, stopping him just short. “Just leave it.”

“You’re cranky when you’re hungry,” Alex said, puffing out his lower lip a little.

“I’m not hungry,” Hank said. “And I’m always cranky.”

Alex could hardly argue with that, these days anyway.

“Come on, Hank.”

“What do you want, Alex?” he asked, his voice rough and sharp at the same time.

“I want to make sure you’re okay,” Alex said, putting a hand on his shoulder, only to have it tossed away.

“Stop,” Hank said. He closed his eyes and turned away from Alex. “Stop pretending you still… still care.”

Alex’s jaw dropped. “Of course I still care.” He tugged on Hank’s arm, forcing him to turn back. “You think… you think _this_ changes anything?” he asked.

“It changes everything,” Hank said.

Alex shook his head. “Not for me.”

Hank studied him, confused, as he tried to understand. “It should.”

“I meant what I said, Bozo. I still think you’re beautiful.”

A strange sound erupted from Hank’s throat. “Why?” he asked.

Alex pressed a kiss to Hank’s lips, then his cheeks, then his nose. “Doesn’t matter.” He kept kissing all over his face, until he could feel a small laugh bubbling out of Hank. “There you are,” he said, smiling broadly. “Now maybe you’ll eat something? I saved you a plate. Would’ve brought it, but you know how Charles feels about eating outside the dining room.”

 

They were leaning against the counter, picking over the remains of dinner, laughing about an ugly painting Alex had destroyed by ‘accident’ the other day, when Sean walked in. They greeted him happily, and Sean responded with a look that seemed both confused, and concerned that they were up to something suspicious. He reached past them, grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge. “You two getting along? It must be the end of the world,” he said.

He was a smart kid. It didn’t take him long to figure it out.

 

Alex destroyed the basement, but this was no accident. Rebuilding it to fit Hank’s schematics for Cerebro wasn’t nearly as much fun as making the mess had been.

 

“I need your hands,” Hank said, walking into the lounge with his nose in a book.

“Yeah?” Alex said, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

“Dude, gross,” Sean said, making a face.

“No!” Hank said, and Alex was certain that he was blushing somewhere under that blue fur. “I mean, my hands are too big and lack the dexterity for-”

“I’m out,” Sean said, throwing his hands in the air.

Alex got up, grinning ear to ear. “You were saying about my hands?” he asked, tracing them along Hank’s hips.

“I’m not making sexual innuendo,” Hank said, matter-of-factly. “I am nearly finished with Cerebro, but…” he raised his hands and wiggled his fingers.

“Gotcha, big hands. Come on, Bozo.” He took one of Hank's big hands in his own and walked down the hall with him.

 

With the machine up and running, tracking down mutants became almost easy. Alex accompanied Charles on numerous house calls, inviting many young mutants to come learn to control their abilities in a safe environment. They even found a few older mutant who already had control, and invited them to join the staff – which was quite a load off, because Alex was pretty sure they could hardly call it a school when they had only two teachers with more than a GED.

 

It took time, to get everything up and running, but just under two years after Cuba, they start honest-to-god teaching, and Alex was pretty sure it was a fucking disaster.

Charles though? Charles loved it. He was smiling again, _really_ smiling for the first time since Cuba, and he was pretty sure the psychic energy was having an effect on everyone. Everyone seemed in a good mood lately.

Everyone but Hank.

“What’s the matter?” Alex asked, pressing his lips to Hank’s shoulder.

Hank shrugged.

“Come on, don’t be like that,” Alex said. “Charles’ good mood seems contagious, literally, to everyone but you.”

“He hasn’t been able to get in my head the same since…”

Alex realized, now, that while he thought of his life in the context of _before_ and _after_ Cuba, Hank’s life was _before_ and _after_ the serum. _Before_ and _after_ blue.

 

Things in Vietnam got worse, and were going to get a lot worse before they got any better.

Draft letters started rolling in, first taking older students, then some of the teachers. Still, life went on. Classes had to get reshuffled, and things were simultaneously quieter and more chaotic.

 

“Tell me what’s eating at you?”

“It’s nothing, it’s just… when it was just the handful of us, it was fine. Charles and Sean never made a big deal out of my mutation, and you…”

“I _love_ your mutation,” Alex said, kissing his temple.

“You’re an outlier and thus should not be factored into any sort of scientific conclusions.”

“Alright brainiac, what scientific conclusions am I being excluded from?”

“The others. The students, I mean.”

“What, did someone say something?”

Hank shook his head. “No, of course not. I think they’re all too _afraid_ to say anything. But I see the look in their eyes. They’re terrified of me. I’m a monster, a _freak_ , even for a school of freaks.”

“Hmm,” Alex hummed. “I think you’ve got it all wrong.”

“Please enlighten me,” Hank said, the doubt clear in his voice.

“Anyone who’s spent five minutes with you knows you’re a giant teddy bear. Nothing to be scared of. Maybe intimidated, because you’re terrifyingly genius. But they all look up to you.”

“Do not.”

“Pretty sure they do. And it’s not…”

“Not what?”

“Okay, promise not to get mad?”

Hank frowned. “No. I’ll get precisely as mad as your statement suggests I should.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Hank-”

“Telling me not to get mad implies that you think I will be aggravated by whatever you’re going to say.”

“Fine, get mad, whatever. It’s just… these kids have spent most of their lives thinking they were the only one of their kind, that they’re the biggest freak in the world. Then they come here and realize that they’re _not_ alone, and that’s revolutionary. We both know that. When Charles found us… you know how that felt. It’s amazing. But there’s still that little voice in the back of your head that says you’re still a freak. And for a lot of them, they’ll always worry that their mutation is freakier than everyone else’s. So having you here… it’s like. Like there is always at least one person here who’s freakier than they are.”

And he knew that it was the absolute wrong thing to say.

 

 

_Seven_

_Alex?_ Charles called out to him mentally. _There is a call for you from Sister Christine._

Alex frowned, trying to remember where he recognized the name from. He thought about it all the way down to the study, and only when his hand reached for the phone did he remember.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Alexander?”

“Yes.”

“We recently heard from your mother. Your biological mother. She would very much like to meet you.”

 

It was supposed to be a quick trip, take a few days off, meet the woman who’d left him as a child, then get back to the school, back to his life.

Katherine Summers was nice, and pretty, and not a mutant. She told him that maybe his father was, but she had no way of knowing, hadn’t spoken to him in over twenty years.

It was weird, and awkward, and most of the time, Alex didn't know what to say. He'd wanted to meet her so badly when he was younger, to know who she was and where he came from. Now, he realized, where he came from didn't matter so much.

She was married now, and thinking about starting a family and Alex envied that, and despised her almost, for not thinking about it when she had him. His life might’ve been so different.

 

Then he get’s drafted.

 

 _I’m sorry,_ he writes to Hank _. I said all the wrong things. I do that a lot, with you. All these good intentions running around in my head, but they never make it out quite right. I’m sorry._

_What I meant to say was this: The kids look up to you. We all do. You’re incredible. And it’s not that you’re a bigger freak than everyone else. We’re all freaks, but I don’t think there’s a chart that says who’s moreso than another. It’s that you’re free. You aren’t hiding. They look at you, and feel hope for themselves. That one day they’ll be able to accept themselves like you have. That they’ll be free to be themselves without fear of what others will think._

_So that serum you’ve got tucked away in your lab, the one you think I don’t know you’ve been working on – don’t use it. You’re perfect the way you are. Erik and Raven aren’t wrong, just misguided. This backwards society wants to hide us away, bury us until they need us. Don’t let them._

He never makes it back home.

He never sends the letter either.

 

 

_Eight_

“You’re not blue,” Alex said, surprising Hank enough that he knocked a beaker off the tabletop and only just managed to keep it from hitting the ground.

“Alex?” Hank asked.

“Hey, Bozo,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He had no idea what to say, no idea at all.

“What are you doing here?”

“I—war’s over. Time to come home.”

Hank’s expression was blank as he studied him.

“Your serum works, I see.”

“You left, Alex,” he said, a non sequitur if ever there was one.

“I know.”

“You left, didn’t say a damn thing.”

“ _I know_.”

“And you think you can just… show up like no time has passed?”

“I made a mess of things, I know. My whole life has been a mess, Hank. I tried… I didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did. They just… happened. And like an idiot, I let them. I never knew the right things to say with you, and I didn’t know how to fix things… and the more time when by, the more impossible it seemed. So I just didn’t… Look, it’s not like I expected you to wait for me or something. I don’t expect anything from you. I just wanted you to know that I’m back.”

 

Coming back, he thought, might have only made things worse. Reopened old wounds he should’ve left alone. He didn’t think it would hurt so much, seeing Hank again.

But god, it hurt.

 

“He’ll come around,” Charles said.

“Maybe.”

“You’ll stay this time?”

“If he lets me.”

“Good. We could use the extra hands getting the school running again.”

 

“You’re wrong, you know,” were the first words Hank finally said to him _days_ later.

“What?” Alex asked, confused and surprised and…

“You’re wrong. You always knew the right things to say with me. Even when you were staying stupid things.”

Alex half smiled, and it grew wider when Hank leaned in to kiss him.

 

“You shouldn’t hide, you know,” Alex said, running his fingers through the hair at the based of Hank’s neck.

“Is this gonna be a thing?” Hank asked, pulling away and frowning. “Because if it is, we should just stop right now.”

“Not a thing,” Alex promised. “I get why you do it. Needing to look _normal_ , blend in when you go out or whatever. I was an idiot before, but I get it now. All I’m saying is, you don’t need to hide from _me_.”

Hank furrowed his brow, then shifted his features to the blue and furry Beast. Alex smiled and kissed him.

“I know what people think,” Hank said, smiling at the irony. “But the real freak in this relationship is you.”

“I think I’m okay with that.” Alex smiled wider and kissed him again.

 

 

_Nine_

“Mm. It’s too early,” Hank grumbled, scratching his belly with his claws.

“I know, sorry,” Alex said. “You can get back to bed once I’m gone.”

“Where’re you going?” Hank asked sleepily.

“I have to head out for a few days,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head after giving it a quick sniff. “My mom called; there’s been some… problems. I think my kid brother is like me. Imagine that. I’m gonna drive out there and check it out, maybe bring him back here if it’s bad.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Hank said.

“Sure thing.” Alex finished getting ready, then leaned over Hank’s almost sleeping form. “Love you, Bozo,” he said, kissing his nose.

“Love you too,” Hank mumbled into his pillow.

 

 

_Ten_

Hank didn’t understand at all. Didn’t understand when Raven said he was beautiful, and understood even less when Alex said it, even before his secondary mutation. And after he was furry and blue and quite literally a monster, Raven said it again. He’d been terrified to even look at Alex, for fear of his reaction, but his voice drew him to look up when he renamed him ‘Beast’. It should’ve been demeaning, should’ve made him mad, but Alex’s voice was full of awe, and he was smiling and unafraid. Later, when he whispered that Hank was still beautiful, he almost believed it.

But it was years before he really accepted it.

The serum gave him control, gave him the ability to switch between _normal_ and _Beast_ , and most of the time he chose normal. Normal was easier, no matter what Alex thought.

But Alex thought Beast was beautiful too, and eventually Hank really did believe it, even if he never chose to share that side of himself with anyone else.

The serum wasn’t perfect. It gave control, but it wasn’t permanent, and he was constantly having to increase the dosage to achieve that same control. Eventually, he would be unable to take in the amount he needed. Eventually, he would have to accept the Beast full time.

 

With Alex, it had been easy. He had been so adamant about how beautiful Hank was that he sometimes forgot that the rest of the word didn’t see him the same.

Without Alex…

…

 

The others classify their lives as _before_ Apocalypse, and _after_ Apocalypse. It’s a logical system, the best way to explain things as they were then versus how they are now.

Hank classified his life as _with_ Alex and _without_ Alex. With Alex, he was happy. Without Alex... well, he was still working on that bit. He still had trouble with it, still expected to wake up in his arms, still smelled his scent everywhere he went. Alex was everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Without Alex, or, perhaps _for_ Alex, he stopped taking the serum. It was only a matter of time before it lost it's affect, but giving it up now was a choice.

One that he maybe should’ve made a long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

> So after seeing Apocalypse (and rewatching FC and DOFP), I kept thinking about how the timeline could possibly work. Mostly I was thinking about the ENORMOUS age gap between Alex and Scott, which was what this was born out of, and it was probably supposed to focus more on that, but I was also thinking a lot about Hank/Alex and how fucking cute they are, and wtf happened in the twenty years between FC and XMA, and well, here we are. This fic didn't turn out quite like I expected, and I may try to fix a few things later, but on the whole I think I'm pretty happy with it


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